Again, Glitsky wouldn't rise. "I can't really blame him, Diz. He can't afford to lose his own job to make me happy."

"That wouldn't happen," Treya argued. "He's too connected."

"People might have said the same thing about me last year," Glitsky said. "It's a different world down there lately." He shrugged. "Frank got the word from above; then he got to be the messenger. If he didn't want to deliver it, they'd find somebody else, and then he's not a team player anymore. He had no choice."

But Treya shook her head. "He didn't have to tell you good cops don't go where they choose, they go where they're ordered. That doesn't sound like a friend."

"I could hear me telling one of my troops the same thing." Clearly uncomfortable with the discussion, Glitsky looked around the table. "As for being friends, Frank's my superior officer. He's doing his job."

"So you're really going to payroll?" Frannie asked. "I can't really see you crunching numbers all day long."

The edge of Glitsky's mouth turned up. "I'm sure there'll be lots of hidden satisfactions. In any event, I'll find out on Monday."

"You got a backup plan?" Hardy asked.

Glitsky looked at Treya, tried a smile that didn't quite work. "We've got a new baby," he said. "What else am I going to do?"

2

It was a Thursday evening in early November. Daylight Saving Time had ended on the previous weekend, and consequently it was full night by six o'clock. It was darker even than it might have been because the streetlights on O'Farrell Street between Stockton and Powell had not come on-perhaps they hadn't been set back for the time change.

A fifteen-knot wind was biting and blowing up from off the Bay, pushing before it the occasional large drop of what was to be the first real rainstorm of the season. Although Sam Silverman's pawnshop was located only one block south of the always-congested Union Square neighborhood, tonight-with the awful weather and deep blackness-the street out front was all but deserted.